'I felt like I needed to take a shower,' witness says

Jeff Coen and Bob Secter, TRIBUNE REPORTERSCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Top advisers to Gov. Rod Blagojevich were so aggressive in trying to recruit veteran Democratic fundraiser Joe Cari to raise campaign cash that "I felt like I needed to take a shower," Cari testified Wednesday at the federal corruption trial of Blagojevich insider Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

Early in the governor's first term, Rezko, fellow Blagojevich confidant Christopher Kelly and even the governor himself pressured Cari, a former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, to launch a national fundraising organization that could bankroll a possible Blagojevich presidential run, Cari testified. Also in on the arm-twisting was Stuart Levine, Cari said. Levine is the political fixer who prosecutors say conspired with Rezko to rig decisions of state boards and extort kickbacks.

The hard sell included offers to reward Cari's political support with state resources, he testified.

Cari said he made the shower remark to his office assistant after returning from a lunch in 2004 at which Kelly had dangled lucrative state business and contracts as bait. Cari said he met Rezko only once but was also offered similar inducements from him to help the governor.

Cari said the blatant nature of the pitches for his support turned him off. That infuriated Rezko attorney Joseph Duffy, who asked Cari why he never complained about the pressure to his longtime friend David Wilhelm, who had chaired Blagojevich's 2002 campaign.

"[Wilhelm] was so close to the governor, and did you ever call and say what was going on?" Duffy asked, though he knew the answer.

Cari never agreed to the fundraising pitch but did land in legal hot water in connection with his pursuit of state pension business. He testified as part of a deal with prosecutors in return for his guilty plea to attempted extortion for his role in a kickback scheme with Levine.

Also testifying Wednesday was Clyde Robinson, director of investor relations for JER, a Virginia-based investment firm. He testified about an alleged attempt by Cari and Levine to shake down JER for a bogus finder's fee for an $85 million investment from an Illinois teachers pension fund.

Robinson said the pension deal was close to approval when JER fielded a strange call from a man named Bill McCullom claiming he was due a finder's fee for bringing JER the business. But no one at JER had heard of McCullom. Robinson called McCullom back but heard a recurring beep throughout the conversation. "It sounded as if this phone call was being recorded," Robinson recalled.

Things got even stranger. Next, JER got an unsolicited fax sent from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean from a consulting firm calling itself Emerald Star International. It was a proposed consulting contract for the Illinois deal that Emerald Star wanted JER to sign.

JER officials ignored it, but then Cari called out of the blue to press them to sign the paper from Emerald, Robinson said. Cari, too, was unknown to JER officials. JER President Debbie Harmon took the call but put it on a speakerphone, so Robinson and others could hear.

Cari sounded subdued during his testimony. But Robinson said the Cari who called JER was a bully who threatened to have a secretary fired if she didn't patch him through to Harmon immediately. Once connected, Cari brusquely declared that JER's pension deal would be stopped if the firm didn't agree to pay the finder's fee.

Though Cari has testified that he barely knew Blagojevich, he declared on the phone to JER that he was close to the governor and that the fee arrangement was "how the governor handles patronage," Robinson recalled.

A spokeswoman for Blagojevich said Cari's alleged assertions on the phone to JER were flat wrong. "As we've said before, that's not how we operate," Abby Ottenhoff said Wednesday.

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jcoen@tribune.com

bsecter@tribune.com

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